People keep using that `D-Word’ nowadays – Depression. I don’t mean the mental or emotional state of anguish and dejection – let’s face it, that’s an ongoing saga for our times, regardless of the Dow – but Depression as in, “Let’s ride the rails, get out our harmonicas and live in hobo jungles, with sepia Dorothea Lange images, `Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?’” kind of Depression.

As a child of Great Depression-era kids, I’m not sure what to make of that word’s current usage. How many times have I heard the stories about how my mother didn’t have soles in her shoes because times were tough back then? Or that my dad had to quit high school and joined the Merchant Marine to make ends meet for his family?

Or that my grandparents needed to leave New York for Baltimore because my grandfather had to find work desperately? Or that my grandmother took in foster kids for a few extra bucks?

A few weeks ago, I asked my old friend Gil Sandler, who lived through the Depression of the ‘30s himself, if he thought reports of a new Depression were greatly exaggerated. To my dismay, he didn’t exactly dismiss the notion. “We have to see how things fall out,” said Gilbert, probably not noticing me gulping and hyperventilating a bit, since I wanted him to say it was utter nonsense. “We just have to see what happens with all that’s going on.”

But when I asked another expert and survivor of the Hoover era – namely, my mother – what she thought, she scoffed at the notion.

“Where are the bread lines? Where are the people jumping out of skyscrapers?” she said. “Everyone’s panicking too fast. Have a little faith. And believe in this president.”

Let’s pray that my mother, who’s been known to be wrong on more than one occasion, is right on the money about this point. We can’t minimize all the pain and suffering already going on out there. Just take a look at the abandoned shopping centers already springing up. But at the same time, we somehow can’t allow ourselves to forget what history and our elders have taught us, or fall prey to alarmism and fear.

You put online that your mother has been wrong?  Shanda? 

Interesting that “Depression” connotes something so horrible.  It is really a euphemism.  They could have called it a “canyon” if they really wanted it to sound bad.